This invention relates to a terminal and, in particular to corrective maintenance for the terminal.
There are various kinds of terminals, which are for example facsimile devices, copy machines, printers, or computers. Each of terminals has multiple functions to provide an operator with a normal operation which characterizes the terminal. On the other hand, most of terminals are similar to other terminals in construction that is the combination of hardware units and software instructions, where hardware units include a processor or a CPU and a memory while software instructions include a control module enabling the processor to serve as a controller of a normal operation.
During the normal operation, errors that are caused by noise and so on might occur in the terminal. If occurring, the errors terminate one or more functions of the terminal. In particular, the critical error forces the entire normal operation of the terminal to freeze.
In order to recover the functions or the normal operation, the terminals have corrective maintainers or recovery systems. In detail, a conventional one of the corrective maintainers always reboots the terminal and restarts the normal operation entirely, when detecting the error occurrence in the terminal. Such conventional corrective maintainer is disclosed in Japanese Unexamined Patent Publication No. Hei 8-30474.
However, the rebooting or the restarting is not always effective means for correcting the error. For example, if the error is a software error, the terminal may get back the normal operation by the rebooting. On the other hand, if the error is not corrected by clearing the memory of the terminal or the error is a hardware error, the terminal might not get back the normal operation by the rebooting. In this event, the rebooting puts the terminal into the endless loop, because the error is repeatedly detected whenever the rebooting is carried out.